steaing is bad
...to transfer their luck to an object involved in the game. Wohl and Enzle gave participants an object to hold that was part of the game being played and the results revealed that the participants who were allowed to hold this object were more likely to believe they would win. Wohl and Enzle also tested to see if participants would react the same if given the opportunity to only look at the object rather than physically touch it. The results of this test showed that people believe they can transfer their luck through either touch or merely looking at the object to change the outcome. Friedland, Keinan, and Regev (1992) found even more factors to create a change in illusion of control. These factors included stress levels, and internal and external locus of control. People are sometimes faced with a situation in which they lose complete control over something. If this happens most people tend to try to regain control in any aspect in order to make up for the lose of control in a different situation which in turn can increase the person’s self image and esteem (Friedland et al., 1992). People with an internal locus of control believe they can control the outcomes in their life and are more prone to participating in risky activities or believing chance tasks involve skill as well. However along with believing they can control outcomes in risky and maybe dangerous activities, they tend to also stay away from dangerous activities to control their fate, such as wearing seatbelts and not smoking, more so than externals. Those with an external locus of control believe things that happen to them happen completely by chance and that they are purely governed by fate alone. Friedland et al. hypothesized in their experiment that individuals with an internal locus of control will prefer to predict an outcome rather than postdict it, such as stating what a number rolled will be before actually rolling the dice or rolling the dice then guessing what the outcome was without looking. Friedland et al. believed prediction meant a greater sense of control. In addition to testing these variables they also included the variable of stress to see how stress affects illusion of control in internal and externals. The stress variable was introduced by threatening to give harmless but painful shocks to those who were wrong. One group was given the high stress situation and the other was not threatened with any shocks. It was found by Friedland et al. that the group in the high stress situation tended to predict more often than postdiction. Another common thread to the research already conducted on illusion of control is that individuals will forgo participating in a gambling task where they have better odds of winning. In the Langer (1975) study, participants were given lottery tickets, then were approached and asked if they would trade their ticket to be in the second group that had better odds of winning. Most of the participants would not give up their original ticket because they felt that trading would decrease their controllability of the task. In Friedland et als’ (1992) study this same behavior was observed with a roulette wheel. Participants were given the choice to stand behind the wheel and use a stopping device to stop the wheel at their discretion or to stand facing the colored sides where they could gamble on either the larger blue area or the smaller red. The participants who could stop the wheel with the stopping device where limited to the smaller red area which made their odds of winning smaller. Again the participants were divided into two groups, those in the high stress, shock group, or those in the low stress, no shock group. Those in the high stress group opted for using the stopping device on the wheel, narrowing their chances of winning. On the other hand, those in the low stress group opted for the less risky situation in which they could wager on the blue or the red, making their odds of winning larger. Those with the external locus of control decided to also use the less risky option. Therefore the study supported the hypothesis that high stress conditions will increase illusion of control. The use of the brake as opposed to not using it created a larger sense of control over the situation. Davis, Sundahl, and Lesbo (2000) also studied the effects of illusion of control on gambling behavior in casino type games, such as craps. This study focused more on active versus passive involvement. It seems obvious that a person would have a greater illusion of control on their own roll than they would on their partner’s roll because they feel they are controlling the outcome by personally participating in the event. Just watching someone does not give much leeway in the belief of control. Davis and colleagues hypothesized that in a game of craps, shooters would bet more than non-shooters and non-shooters would also place more difficult bets, which was supported in their experiment. To stay up with the current technology many casinos are switching out their old manual machines for ones with just buttons. This style makes the participant feel like they are not in control as much as if they had a lever to pull. The results of Davis et als’ (2000) study suggest that leaving the old method of gaming devices as opposed to more technologically advanced machines will increase productivity on those certain machines in the casinos. Many of the studies on illusion of control did not test the differences between men and women. The purpose of this current study is to study the effects of positive or negative stereotypes on illusion of control. It is hypothesized that women who are primed with positive stereotypes before participating in a task will show a greater illusion of control than will those not primed with the stereotype, or alternately given a negative stereotype. For example if a room full of women and men are told that women normally do better on the task at hand then the women will have higher illusion of control because they truly believe they will do better on the chance task. The men of the group, having just been given a negative stereotype, will have a lower illusion of control because their expectations of their ability on the task will be lower. Car insurance agencies charge men more money longer than they do for women. This gives the stereotype that women are safer drivers than men are. This situation can lead to women have a higher illusion of control and could lead them to engage in riskier driving, thinking they can control the outcome more than men. Method Participants Participants were 23 undergraduate students at the University of Oregon taking an introductory psychology course. They were offered extra credit for voluntarily participating in the experiment. The collected demographic information revealed that the participants were between the ages of 17 and 42, and reported themselves as 52.2% female, 82.6% European American, 8.7% Asian-American and 4.3% “other.” One participant identified them self as Hispanic. It was noted that four of the participants arrived late to the study, and were included in the primed group. Materials Participants were each given a questionnaire created by the researchers including demographic information such as age, gender, and ethnicity. Each questionnaire included eight individual boxes for the participants to record their answers, and rate their confidence on a scale of one to seven. The researchers developed a script to announce to the participants prior to the beginning of the experiment, to ensure that the participants would not guess the objective of the experiment. Decks of 52 cards were used for each experimental group and were not different for any group. The scores on the confidence scale operationalized the dependent variable. High scores on the confidence scale, scores of seven, were correlated to high self-confidence therefore, high illusion of control and low scores to low self-confidence, low illusion of control. (See appendix A for all stimuli included in the experiment.) Procedure Subjects were given a choice to participate in the experiment for extra credit in their introductory psychology class. The participants were divided into four experimental groups that consisted of unprimed females, unprimed males, primed females and primed males. Each of the unprimed groups contained five participants, males and females, and each of the primed groups contained six participants. Participants were seated in individual desks with one researcher per group. A script was read to the primed groups, explaining that women have been known to do better on certain tasks involving intuition than men, and that the researchers were interested in how this is exhibited in certain social situations as well. Each participant was given a questionnaire with instructions for the experiment, and then was given the instructions verbally by the researcher, and asked to keep their answers on the questionnaire confidential from the other participants. The questionnaire consisted of eight individual boxes in which the participants could draw a picture of the card suit they believed the specified card was. If they were uncomfortable with drawing the picture, they could simply write the name of the suit in the box provided. Under each box was the confidence scale of one to seven where one referred to no confidence and seven referred to absolute confidence. Four placards numbered one to four for the first trial and five to eight for the second trial, on the back of those, were placed on the desk in front of the researcher. Then the researcher placed one card at a time, face down, in front of each numbered placard, and instructed the participants to concentrate on that card, and guess what suit it was, then rate their confidence. After the first four cards were laid out and everyone made their guess and rated their confidence, the researcher picked up the cards and shuffled them back into the original deck. Then four more cards were laid out one at a time for the second trial. After making their guess on all eight cards the participants were debriefed by the experimenter. Results It was hypothesized that women who were primed with positive stereotypes before participating in a task would show a greater illusion of control than would those not primed with the stereotype, or alternately given a negative stereotype. A 2x2 factorial, between-subjects, ANOVA was conducted for the two main effects, effect of gender and effect of priming, and an interaction between gender and priming. Contrary to the hypothesis, a statistically significant interaction did not occur for the main effect of gender, F (1, 19) = .007, p < .94. Women overall (M = 2.9, SD = 1.3) had confidence ratings slightly higher than the men (M = 2.8, SD = 1.7) but not enough to be considered statistically significant. Although women who were primed (M = 3.7, SD = 1.1) had higher confidence ratings than the men who were also primed (M = 3.4, SD = 2.0), the confidence ratings were statistically non-significant. The interaction observed between gender and priming was not statistically significant in this study. However, for the main effect of priming, gender aside, the 2 x 2 fa...